He experienced the second sensation of this type at the end of the second seven-year period in his life. It concerned a realm unconnected with grandmotherly help, something of a far more delicate nature and not at all bicycle-related. Out of necessity, Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s censorship concerned only printed sources, but prohibited information had verbal distribution channels, too. Classmates supplied Solovyov with certain details about relations between the sexes, though that was all presented in the crudest, most mechanistic ways. Solovyov’s education in that regard progressed so one-dimensionally and chaotically that by the time he had a notion of the essence of the sexual act, he was somehow still unaware that children appeared as the result of those same actions.
The connection between those two phenomena ended up being thoroughly unexpected for him, even unpleasantly so. Solovyov did not much want to connect a joyous and anticipated event such as the appearance of a child with the disgusting rhythmic motions that his classmates showed him while laughing. It cannot be ruled out that, deep down in his soul, the boy platonically in love with Nadezhda Nikiforovna simply did not want to believe it. A sober look at things hinted to schoolboy Solovyov that he and Nadezhda Nikiforovna were not fated to have children in this fashion.
Solovyov was shaken by that revelation, and during a school gathering he imagined, in turn, all the parents in attendance during production of his classmates. Taking that further, he imagined the schoolteachers in the same mode, up to and including the principal ( Bigfoot was her nickname), a bulky, unsmiling woman with braids folded on her head. Based on the existence of all their children, Solovyov came to the indisputable conclusion that each of them had done that at least once in their lives. Including the principal, difficult though it was to believe. Copulation scenes more or less emerged for the rest of the teaching staff, but Solovyov’s fantasy turned out to be powerless when applied to the principal. In the end, the adolescent managed to imagine her, too, but the spectacle turned out to be ghastly. Peace of mind came only with the thought that the dreadful phenomenon had taken place one single time and would never be repeated.
After exhausting all available possibilities, Solovyov moved on to examining other people in his immediate surroundings. Now, the portraits that had been looking at him from the classroom walls for so many years captured his attention. Solovyov was a child of the late Soviet period, so there was not a broad selection at his disposal. The central, largest portrait in the classroom belonged to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). It was he who attracted the adolescent’s attention most of all.
Solovyov had to turn his head constantly to unite Lenin with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who occupied a modest spot in the classroom pantheon between Anatoly Lunacharsky and Anton Makarenko. The concluding picture turned out to be far more imaginable than that of the principaclass="underline" either Solovyov’s fantasy had managed to get some rest or this was an optical effect from the convergence of distant images.
‘Did Lenin have children?’ Solovyov once asked during a biology lesson.
‘He did not,’ said the teacher. ‘But is that really a question on the subject of amphibians?’
‘Yes,’ said Solovyov.
Krupskaya’s Graves-disease profile, along with her partner’s small, spiteful motions lent the pair a defiantly amphibious look. Well, then, needless to say, they did not have children; they just made each other nauseous.
Karl Marx turned out to be the concluding entity in this portrait-driven period. No matter how Solovyov struggled, in his imagination, Marx only ever united with Friedrich Engels. Not yet suspecting the possibilities of this kind of alliance, Solovyov left the founding fathers in peace.
Solovyov acquired his own first experience of this sort in the vicinity of the Kilometer 715 station. Looking back on the circumstances of his life, that hardly seems very unexpected. The majority of what happened during Solovyov’s adolescence was tied to the station in some way or other, with the only exceptions being Solovyov’s relationship with Nadezhda Nikiforovna and his study at school, both of which took place an hour and a half’s walk from his place of residence. Needless to say, the tender experience under discussion could not have been acquired either at school or, even more so, at Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s. It was acquired in Solovyov’s home.
The house was a fairly dilapidated structure. It consisted of an entryway, a kitchen, and two small rooms adjoining the kitchen. The windows looked out on a railroad embankment that was not high but was overgrown with grass. After his mother’s death, Solovyov, who had previously been housed in the same room as his grandmother, moved into his deceased’s mother’s room. He did that from an instinctive striving to fill the emptiness that had arisen after his mother’s departure. When he entered that emptied room, he creaked the cracked floorboards and slept on his mother’s bed, making her departure seem less irrevocable to him. In the end, the room’s emptiness was partially filled because someone else, in addition to Solovyov and his grandmother, also began spending time there: Leeza Larionova.
Leeza had been at the Solovyovs’ before. She was Solovyov’s only peer in the whole area around Kilometer 715; in fact, she was the only child there besides him. When she came back from school with Solovyov she would go home to eat but would show up an hour later at the Solovyov home, where the two of them would sit down to do their homework. Leeza listened attentively to Solovyov’s reasoning when solving math problems, hardly ever contradicting him. And when Solovyov struggled, she would prompt him, timidly and often in question form, about the correct way to solve them. Sometimes it seemed to Solovyov that even in cases when he was incorrect, she wrote the same things in her notebook so as not to offend him. There was no doubt that verity was not an end, in and of itself, for Leeza.
Leeza could have been what was defined, in previous times, as the head of the class. She had a clear mind but lacked the key thing for a career as head of the class (or, admittedly, for any career): ambition.
Their shared walks to and from school were a manifestation of nothing more than ordinary neighborly relations. At least in the beginning. They had walked together since first grade. This sort of travel seemed safer to their household members. In families that lacked men (Leeza lived with her mother) the word ‘safety’ possessed special weight.
Little Solovyov was embarrassed about walking to school with Leeza. The most distressing thing about those circumstances was that he and Leeza were labeled bride and groom. This common taunt for cases like theirs was all the more hurtful for Solovyov because, of course, he secretly considered Nadezhda Nikiforovna to be his bride. The moment they neared the school, Solovyov demonstrated in every way possible that an immense distance stretched between these two people who were apparently arriving together. The future historian turned away, lagged behind, made faces behind Leeza’s back and, in brief, reached extraordinarily, extraordinarily high levels of detachment that nevertheless still allowed their shared return home.
His treatment of Leeza was especially harsh in the presence of Nadezhda Nikiforovna. True, there was nothing there that might have been deemed as not comme il faut: Solovyov knew his chosen one tolerated no brattiness. At the library, Leeza’s lot was to receive icy gazes and short answers in a scratchy voice. To Solovyov’s annoyance, Nadezhda Nikiforovna did not understand that he was making these efforts, under the circumstances, for her sake. From time to time, she herself addressed Leeza when she was waiting for Solovyov. Oddly enough, the little girl was one of Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s frequent visitors, too. Although the selection of books was not conducted as ceremoniously for Leeza as for Solovyov, Leeza read a lot. Perhaps even a little more than Solovyov himself.